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Aristotle's Notion of Experience Aristotle’s Notion of Experience by Pavel Gregorić and Filip Grgić (Zagreb) Abstract: Aristotle’s notion of experience plays an important role in his epistemology as the link between perception and memory on the one side, and higher cognitive capacities on the other side. However, Aristotle does not say much about it, and what he does say seems inconsistent. Notably, some passages suggest that it is a non-rational capacity, others that it is a rational capacity and that it provides the principles of science. This paper presents a unitary account of experience. It explains how experience grows from perception and memory into a rational capacity, and in what way it provides the principles. 1. The Problem with Aristotle’s Notion of Experience “The first to arrive at a definition of experience,” wrote W. H. Heinemann, “seems to be Aristotle”1. This is a bold statement in at least two respects. First, it is questionable whether Aristotle ever produces a definition of experience. He says various things about experience, most extensively in the first chapter of the first book of Metaphysics (Met. A.1) and in the last chapter of the second book of the Posterior Analytics (APo. II.19), but he never defines it. Had he defined it, his notion of experience might have been easier for us to understand. Second, if one takes ‘definition of experience’ in a wide sense of saying something determinate about the character and utility of experience, Heinemann’s statement is dubious in the light of our evidence of discussions of experience that predate Aristotle. Some Hippocratic treatises2, denouncing the idea that medicine should be based on philosophical hypotheses, stress the role of experience in formulating medical theories, as opposed to untestable philosophical speculations. Some pre-Socratic philosophers seem to 1 Heinemann 1941, 562. Heinemann quotes Posterior Analytics II.19 103a3-9 to support his claim. 2 De Vetere Medicina and De Natura Hominis, in particular. 2 Pavel Gregorić / Filip Grgić have associated experience with memory and counted it among the characteristically human achievements.3 Both Plato and Aristotle suggest that the sophist Polus of Acragas contrasted the pair experience- inexperience with the pair art-chance.4 In the Gorgias, Plato drives a wedge between experience and art. While art carries insight into the nature of its object and into the cause of its procedures, experience affords no such insight, for it relies entirely on the memory of what usually happens. What this enabled Plato’s Socrates to do is to disparage rhetoric as mere experience.5 Similarly, the distinction between slave and free doctors in the Laws rests on the fact that the former rely on experience, whereas the latter have a systematic knowledge which enables them to teach their apprentices and give accounts of their procedures to the patients.6 Elsewhere in Plato references to experience are not so sharply contrasted with art, and they tend to be more positive.7 What distinguishes Aristotle’s treatment of experience is that he seems to be the first one to give it a fixed place in the hierarchy of cognitive capacities and dispositions. This would suffice for Heinemann’s enthusiastic conclusion that “[t]his Aristotelian restriction of experience to its intellectual meaning and its connection with science and technē has continued up to now to influence the treatment of the problem”8. For Aristotle, experience fills a wide gap between the non- rational cognitive capacities of perception and memory on the one side, and the rational cognitive dispositions of art and science on the other side. More precisely, Aristotle maintains that experience comes about from perception and memory, and that art and science in turn come 3 See Anaxagoras fr. B21 (Diels-Kranz) apud Plutarchus, De fortuna 98F; Democritus fr. B5 (Diels-Kranz) apud Diodorus, Bibliotheca historica I.8.7-8. 4 Plato, Gorgias 448c5-7; Aristotle, Metaphysics A.1 981a4-5. There is a significant difference between what Plato and Aristotle make Polus say. The Platonic Polus says that experience makes our life proceed in accordance with art, and inexperience in accordance with chance. The Aristotelian Polus says that experience produced art, and inexperience chance. There is no reason to suppose that Aristotle did not have direct knowledge of the work of Polus; cf. Renehan 1995. 5 Gorgias 462b3-463b6, 500e3-501b1. 6 Laws 720a2-e5, 857c5-e1. 7 See, e.g., Protagoras 320b, 341a; Republic 484d, 582a, 584e; Philebus 55e, Laws 720a-e. 8 Heinemann 1941, 562, Heinemann’s italic. Aristotle’s Notion of Experience 3 about from experience. However, it is far from clear what sort of disposition experience is, according to Aristotle, how it comes about, and how it yields art and science. This is what we shall try to elucidate in this paper. We shall start by pointing out one acute and largely unacknowledged difficulty with Aristotle’s notion of experience. This will allow us to set out some preliminaries and give an outline of our approach which aims, among other things, to solve that difficulty. The difficulty is the following: when Aristotle relates experience to memory, it seems to be a non-rational disposition which is partially attainable to some non- rational animals. When related to art or science, experience seems to be a full-blown rational disposition which is characteristic of human beings. But how can there be one single cognitive capacity or disposition which is both non-rational and rational? There are two main pieces of evidence for thinking that experience is non-rational. First, nothing in Aristotle’s texts suggests that the emergence of experience from memory requires any rational activity. ‘Many memories of the same thing’ (Met. A.1 980b29-981a1), or what seems to be equivalent, ‘frequent memories of the same thing’ (APo. II.19 100a4), appear to be both necessary and sufficient for the generation of experience.9 Memory itself is a non-rational capacity, as Aristotle explains in De Memoria et Reminiscentia 1, and if its repeated exercise brings about experience, this experience should also be non- rational. Second, Aristotle says that some other animals have a share in experience, if only to a modest degree (Met. A.1 980b25-27). If some non-rational animals indeed have a bit of experience, this bit of experience has to be non-rational. On the other hand, there is a number of passages which suggest that experience is rational. We shall pick out only two. One is that Aristotle speaks of ‘thoughts of experience’ (th=j e)mpeiri/aj e)nnoh/mata) and says that having certain judgements is a matter of experience (Met. A.1 981a5-9). This seems to imply that experience operates with rational contents such as thoughts and judgements, so it has to be rational. The other passage comes from the Prior Analytics, where Aristotle says that “it is for our experiences concerning each subject to provide the 9 All translations from the Greek are ours unless otherwise indicated. 4 Pavel Gregorić / Filip Grgić principles” (I.30 46a17-18).10 It is hard to believe that a non-rational capacity or disposition could provide the principles of the highest rational capacity. Hence, experience must be rational. One way to tackle the problem is to truncate the notion of experience and admit only its rational aspect. This would require rejection of the evidence to the contrary. For example, one could argue that when Aristotle speaks of ‘many memories of the same thing’, he is talking about human beings, so that it is only in rational beings that many memories of the same thing can bring about experience. While we would agree that the story of the emergence of experience in Met. A.1 and APo. II.19 is focusing on human beings, this does not imply that experience is rational. For Aristotle, human memory is no more rational capacity than that of other animals,11 and he makes no suggestion that there are additional conditions on repeated memory of the same thing for the generation of experience. As for our second piece of evidence to the contrary, one would have to show that experience does not belong to non-rational animals.12 However, in that case it would be extremely difficult to explain intelligent behaviour of animals, of which Aristotle gives an extensive record in Historia Animalium IX. Assuming that this way of tackling the problem is inadequate in the light of evidence for a non-rational aspect of experience, we shall try a different solution. Instead of truncating the notion of experience, we shall attempt to preserve its unity. We will offer an account in which experience ranges from a modest non-rational achievement that comes about from perception and memory, to a rich rational achievement which is necessary for art and science. We shall base our account primarily on Met. A.1, for it seems less problematic than APo. II.19: it is beset with fewer textual difficulties, it is less prone to employing vague expressions, and it is furnished with examples. Once we extract available information concerning Aristotle’s notion of experience from 10 Transl. Smith 1989. Cf. EN VI.8 1142a18-19: “[T]he first principles of these other [viz. ethical] subjects come from experience.” 11 Cf. De Mem. 1 450a15-25. 12 Alexander of Aphrodisias (In Met. 4.13-16 Hayduck) claims that Aristotle meant either that other animals have no experience at all, or that they have something analogous to it. However, that is not what Aristotle actually says. To be sure, Aristotle does say in HA VIII.1 588a29-30 that non-rational animals have something analogous to te/xnh, sofi/a and su/nesij, but he neither says nor implies that they have something analogous to e)mpeiri/a.
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